On Feb. 17, 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was signed, supplying $836 million for transportation projects in North Carolina. The Federal Highway Administration supplied these funds in the form of grants to be administered by the North Carolina Department of Transportation.
All contractors wishing to bid on ARRA-funded transportation projects must be pre-qualified in the North Carolina Pre-qualification System, either as a prime contractor or subcontractor.
• All local contractors wishing to be considered for various types of work must also be qualified as an approved contractor.
• Any contractor wishing to achieve this status may do so by accessing the Online Pre-qualification System at: http://www.ncdot.org/business/ocs/sub/.
***Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE)***
All federally-funded contracts will have Disadvantaged Business Enterprise goals. A DBE is a small, independent business that is at least 51% owned by one or more socially or economically disadvantaged individuals. This means a percentage of all work must have a percentage of goods or services supplied by a “certified” DBE vendor.
All contractors bidding this work must verify their DBE goals at the time of bid; therefore, only pre-certified DBEs may be shown in the bid proposal.
All contractors wishing to gain DBE status before bidding on federally funded projects may acquire information on the following Web site: http://ncdot.org/business/ocs/dbe/.